


the red string never breaks

by hexereii



Category: Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Difficult Soulmates, DoomReedWeek2020, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Loss, M/M, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexereii/pseuds/hexereii
Summary: The Au-Free-For-All theme gives me a chance to break out this trope I've wanted to do foreeeever, where two people who are soulmates have the first words spoken to each other printed on them at birth? Or from a young age?Particularly good for Doom/Reed, since Reed lead off with his full name and Victor basically told him to fuck all the way off. The dichotomy there is nice.Then you have the issue of... well, what happens when a soulmate erases his own identity to embrace a new persona? What does that do to the soulmate bond? Well, I have some thoughts on that.
Relationships: Reed Richards/Susan Storm (Fantastic Four), Reed Richards/Victor von Doom
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19
Collections: DoomReed Week 2020





	the red string never breaks

Unlike what most assumed of a society based around the notion of "soulmates," not everyone was fortunate enough to find their destined mate. Accidents and wrong turns, misfortunes or simple bad luck could leave a couple separated for the duration of their lives and some even chose, upon meeting their "other half," to remain alone or pursue relationships with other people instead--destiny, the saying went, was not everything.

In light of that, Reed had tried not to concern himself terribly much with the phrase scrawled across his arm in careful, stilted letters: **'That is no concern of mine.'** Perhaps he'd never hear them spoken at all, maybe the woman--as he assumed it must be--was many miles away, attending a different school completely, or maybe he would encounter her on his first day of class--there was no way to predict these things.

Fate, if you accepted its existence at all, was something you couldn't hope to plan for.

After an hour or so of being jostled by the crowd, Reed arrived at his destination at last--room 255, Kirby Hall. His new home, for the next few months--years, potentially, if their STEM program was anything like as advanced as he'd been promised by the recruiters.

He felt a twinge of annoyance on finding the room occupied already; single occupancy dorms were practically unheard of in a school the size of Empire State, but unreasonably, he had hoped for one all the same.

There was nothing for it now but to make the most of a bad situation. Reed opened the door further, clearing his throat a little to let the other student--a tall, handsome boy from what he could see--know that he was present.

"My name's Richards," he announced, lugging his suitcase in and dropping it on the bed before sprawling out beside it. "Reed Richards."

"That is no concern of mine," the boy snapped coldly.

They both froze, Reed's head snapping up to _stare_ at his new roommate, who finally looked up from his own work to study Reed in something akin to horror.

" _What_ did you say??" They both asked in unison.

To forestall any further confusion, Reed pulled back the sleeve of his sweater and lifted his arm to Victor's view. Victor did not respond in kind, instead he threw his pencil down with a snort of disgust and pushed himself back from the small desk at the room's center.

"Coincidence," he muttered, glaring at Reed.

It was hard not to laugh.

"May I see yours?" Reed's heart was beating frantically in his ears, he could only witness his own superficial display of calm with private amazement.

"You may not," Victor said, practically bristling at the suggestion.

"Why? Is it somewhere embarrassing?"

Under the rich gold-brown of his skin, Reed was almost certain he saw the boy flush pink at the question.

"No!"

"Then, let me see it! I showed you mine--"

With one last venomous look, Victor unbuttoned his shirt cuff and carefully rolled back the sleeve. Reed craned his neck in an effort to see but needn't have bothered--he'd have known that handwriting anywhere. And if there were any doubt at all, his entire name was spelled out on the boy's forearm.

"Huh," he said softly. "Never thought it would be a guy. I mean... no offense if you're into guys, I'm usually not, not that I couldn't be, I mean, obviously, I just didn't think of that, I-- I'm babbling." Reed finished with an audible gulp, resuming his seat on the bed. "...Are you, though? Into... I mean... Guys?"

Victor sat silent, rolling his sleeve back down and re-fastening the button without acknowledging Reed further at all.

"Get out," he said in a low, unmistakable tone.

"It's an assigned room, I can't just--"

"GET. OUT."

The eyes that fixed on Reed now, he could almost swear burned red around the pupils--a biological impossibility as far as he knew, but Victor's rage made his palms itch as the hairs at the back of his neck tingled in warning: ' _Danger_ ,' his system said. Reed couldn't help but agree, and yet...

"I'll go get my class schedule for tomorrow," he said, letting the implication of his return rest, just like his suitcase on the still-unmade bed.

This was likely to be an awkward arrangement, to put things very mildly indeed, but what else could he do? The room had been assigned to him--and, he thought, it appeared that they had been assigned to _each other_ \--there was no changing that now.)

"I don't even know his name," he complained to no one in particular.

* * *

He was shortly to learn it, of course--and a multitude of other things as well, such as his new roommate's ability to sit silently for hours at a time, working on some private project or other without even acknowledging that Reed was present, or how his intensely private nature made it so difficult to question him on any subject outside of their school work.

In personal habits, Victor was fastidious to an almost pathological degree--not simply in terms of keeping his space tidy--though he did that too--but in his ability to dress, eat, shower, and sleep without being observed by the person he shared a small space with. Reed was certain that he did all of those things; dirty clothes filled his hamper at regular intervals, paper plates and cups were discarded, the bed was left unmade on at least one occasion, the tiles of their bathroom left dripping from steam--but Victor's determination to never be witnessed performing any simple, human task often left Reed feeling as though he were rooming with a spirit, rather than a real, flesh-and-blood person.

The occasional lively discussion about physical laws and technological developments offered a glimpse into his--he couldn't think of this strange, otherworldly creature as his soulmate no matter what the marks on their arms said--into _Victor's_ psyche, and revealed someone with intellectual capabilities similar to Reed's own, but who thought so far outside the box that for Victor, there _were_ no boxes. There were no walls his agile mind couldn't scale effortlessly, and their conversations were as close to a spiritual experience as Reed felt he was ever likely to know.

Victor was, in a word, _transcendent_. 

Victor was also, by every measure, a complete _ass,_ with an ego so large it generated its own gravitational pull. He'd seen more than one fellow student fall into that dreadful orbit and grow besotted with Von Doom, bringing him gifts that went ignored and basking in his attention even when he offered only withering disdain.

Reed pitied those poor souls tremendously. It was only in the long years later that he would recognize he envied them a little, too; while he couldn't bring himself to fuss over the Von Doom boy or bring offerings like some kind of hopeless supplicant to an angry god... he was no less fascinated than any of them. Certainly no less drawn in.

* * *

In the weeks that followed their volatile first meeting, Reed scrupulously avoided any further mention of soulmates, orientation, romantic leanings, preferences, or any similar thing in favor of just getting to _know_ Victor a little, and while he remained as terse and reticent as ever, small nuggets of information were gradually revealed and filed away.

Much to his surprise, Victor even turned the tables on occasion and asked about Reed--his upbringing in California with two scientifically-minded parents, his inheritance, his fear of never being as bright as his father wanted him to be, all of these things came out easily under that certain, steady gaze; Reed recognized on some level that he was being used as a guinea pig for Victor's earliest forays into hypnotic speech, but since people under hypnosis can't go against their own inner wishes anyway, he took it as a harmless eccentricity.

Relative to so much else about the boy, it truly was.

* * *

The night of the explosion in the boy's dormitory, Reed knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Victor was behind it. Victor, and whatever secret project he'd been obsessing over the past few weeks; whatever was contained in the heavy volume of lore he'd hastily locked away in the trunk under his bed every time Reed came in unexpectedly.

He barely remembered running across the campus toward the site of the accident. Certainly he never remembered that he'd shouted Victor's name, or that the on-site security had held him back, physically preventing him from rushing into a burning building to save his soulmate--Reed left those parts of the story buried, in later years.  
It was a sad truth that not all fated pairs were destined to be together; his loss was commonplace, as he often reminded himself, and really, they'd barely known each other anyway. He was young, he could move on. It wasn't as if he'd fallen in love, how could he? The man was a living cipher, no one could ever get close enough to Victor to love him as deeply as he clearly needed.

(But if that was true, why did the loss feel so profound?)

Rumors on the campus spread quickly, but no one seemed to know the full story in truth. Reed gathered what he could from the corded-off basement lab where Victor his built his ill-fated machine, but still couldn't quite make sense of the work he'd done.

The locket was the last thing he'd found, thrown far from the blast as if Victor had been holding it at the time--he slipped it into his pocket and swallowed back unexpected tears. It was several days before he summoned the nerve to open the thing and let himself finally mourn his brilliant, enigmatic roommate, who was listed by then as missing, badly injured, and presumed dead.

* * *

Ten years later, Reed was jarred awake by a searing pain in his arm; the skin where his soulmate mark still rested suddenly itched and stung and _burned_ as though the individual _molecules_ were somehow shifting. As if the mark itself were being _rearranged_ into a new shape; a new meaning.

He thought immediately of Sue. Some part of him had hoped, against all evidence that existed, that the now-meaningless phrase on his skin might somehow transform into _her_ first words to him instead, but as he rolled back the sleeve of his pajama top anxiously, he knew... that wasn't the reason for this horrible feeling.

The words had changed, yes--but they had nothing to do with his fiancée.

Staring down at the sprawling black letters in a long-familiar hand (now marked by erratic jabs and upward slashes where they had once been copperplate-precise) he felt an unwelcomed surge of hope. Hope, and something deeper that left him feeling simultaneously conflicted and guilty.

"He's alive," Reed whispered to the empty room. He had no idea who 'Doctor Doom' was, or why his name was now scrawled across the inside of his arm, but somehow, he knew it was related to Victor, and that meant... 

"Victor is _alive_." 


End file.
